1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of provisioning telephone services using the SS7 network. More specifically, the present invention relates to the field of providing reports containing details of telephone calls that are not completed.
2. Background of the Invention
Businesses must be able to assess the quality and efficiency of their operations. Such assessments enable businesses to identify and correct inefficient operations that can result in revenue losses to the business. For example, many businesses derive significant revenue via telephone. As a result, telephone calls to the business that are not completed can have a number of undesirable consequences to the business. For example, potential customers can be missed, existing customers can be lost, questions from suppliers can be missed, changes to appointments and meetings can be missed and service opportunities can be lost. Consequently, it is important for businesses to be able to obtain information regarding telephone calls to the business that are not completed.
Telephone calls do not get completed for a number of reasons. Two of the more common are that the telephone call is not answered or the telephone call is busy. A telephone call is considered not answered if it rings for more than a pre-determined number of rings. A telephone call is busy if the telephone call results in a busy signal, e.g., the called party's telephone is being used, i.e., is busy, and therefore unavailable to answer the telephone call.
Services that provide information regarding the details of telephone calls are generally termed “call detail” services. A prior art call detail service provided details on every call to a business. These details include the disposition of the call, for example, whether the call was answered or not, the duration of the call, the time of the call, whether the call was busy and other information. Using this information, reports are generated that are sent to the business. The business could use the reports to analyze various operations of the business.
One such report is a “Busy” report. The Busy report captures information pertaining to telephone calls that are made to a business but receive a busy signal, i.e., busy telephone calls. This information can be used to determine whether there is sufficient capacity in the business' call center. In addition, the information provides a measure of whether telephone calls are being missed, and if so, how many telephone calls are being missed.
Another report that can be generated is a “NoAnswer” report. The NoAnswer report provides information on calls that are not answered. One use of this report is to obtain information related to telephone calls that arrive after business hours, as well as to determine if telephone calls are made to the business after business hours.
The call detail service of the prior art uses a termination attempt (TAT) trigger or public office dialing plan (PODP) trigger. The TAT or PODP trigger is provisioned on the central office switch that provides telephone service to the business, i.e., the terminating central office switch for calls directed to the business. When a telephone call is made to the business, the call encounters the TAT or PODP trigger provisioned on the business' number. The telephone call is then suspended while the SS7 network responds to the TAT or PODP trigger to determine how to handle the call.
When the call is suspended, the terminating central office switch queries a service control point (SCP) using the SS7 signaling network. The SCP determines how to handle the TAT or PODP trigger. In the case of the call detail service of the prior art, the SCP creates an incoming information record. The incoming information record is a record of information pertaining to the call. The information contains such items as the time of the telephone call, the identification of the calling and called parties. It also included a call identification tag. After the SCP creates the incoming information record, it signals the terminating central switch to complete the telephone call to the business. If the telephone call was suspended by a TAT trigger the telephone call continues. If the call was suspended by a PODP trigger the telephone call is forwarded to another number. The SCP further instructs the terminating central office switch to provide a termination notification when the call terminates, and to provide a disposition of the telephone call.
When the telephone call terminates, whether normally or abnormally, the terminating central office switch sends disposition information related to the call to the SCP. The disposition information contains such information as whether the call was not answered and the duration of the telephone call. The disposition information also includes a call identification tag. The SCP uses the disposition information to create a termination call record.
The SCP sends the incoming information and termination information records to a services management system (SMS). The SMS merges the incoming information and termination information records into a single call information record containing all of the pertinent information relating to the call. The SMS uses the call identification tag to pair incoming information records with their corresponding termination information records.
Finally, the SMS creates reports from the call information record that is sent to the business. The business can use these reports to determine the efficiency of its operations, whether additional facilities are needed, whether certain operators are less efficient than others, whether to extend store hours and other operational details of the business.
One problem with this technique is that it requires two steps for processing. The first step is suspending the telephone call and creating the incoming information record. The second step, which is executed after the call terminates, is creating a termination information record and merging the incoming information record with the termination information record.
Another disadvantage of the prior art call detail service is that it results in a delay in completing the telephone call. The delay results from the telephone call being suspended by the terminating switch while the SS7 network responds to the TAT or PODP trigger to determine how to process the call. This delay occurs whether the telephone call is completed or not.